1610: Continental Europe is briefly at peace after years of war, but Henri IV of France is planning to invade the German principalities. In England, only 5 years earlier, conspirators nearly succeeded in blowing up King James I and his Parliament. The seeds of the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War are visibly being sown, and the possiblility for both enlightenment and diaster abounds. But Valentin Rochefort, duellist, down-at-the-heels aristocrat, and spy for Duc de Sully, France's powerful fiance minister, could care less...until he is drawn into the glittering palaces, bawdy back streets, and stunning theatrics of Tenaissance France and Shapespearean London in a deadly plot to both kill King James I and to save him. Determined to save his liege Sully, Rochecort's journey will take him as far away as the distant Nippons, and as close as the truths of his own heart. This swordsman without a conscience is about to find himself caught between loyalty, love and blackmail, be